Re: Ultra Fit USB 3.0: Excessive Heat

The goal of the factory format is as a Super Floppy and is designed to maximize the efficiency of the drive. Windows format does not support the Super Floppy format and may not even care if the drive is removable. It's just not a goal of Windows format function.

So did you format it as NTFS or exFAT?

It is very possible the overheating problem is a self inflected problem.

Re: Ultra Fit USB 3.0: Excessive Heat

For drives less than 64GB FAT32, for drives 64GB and larger exFAT., but all in superfloppy mode with the drive as a single partition. No partition table, no MBR. And neither format has journaling which NTFS has that adds overhead to a drive.

Re: Ultra Fit USB 3.0: Excessive Heat

it's a basic engineering problem. as you put more functional stuff into a smaller space, you get more excess heat. there are workarounds to deal with overheating, but the problem is always present (unless there's a radical change in technology). this is why computers and game consoles have built-in fans, they would overheat and shut down otherwise.

I've had the same issue with my 128gb sandisk ultrafit. the metal gets burning hot when I transfer gigabytes, and even when I leave it in without doing anything, it's hot right after ejecting. it makes sense actually, because they maximized efficiency - with as much speed and memory in as small a space as possible, there has to be a tradeoff: excess heat.

I'll assume on good faith that sandisk is aware of this, and that QC determined that the excess heat is not enough to cause damage to hardware. But naturally it's alarming to the end-user, and I wish they'd been more up-front about this.

In the meantime, I'll still use it, but I'll limit my usage to be on the safe side. It seems to especially heat up in my laptop. I'd think adding ventilation holes would've helped but there could be design reasons I'm not aware of.

Re: Ultra Fit USB 3.0: Excessive Heat

@xcalibur: you said "the metal gets burning hot when I transfer gigabytes, and even when I leave it in without doing anything, it's hot right after ejecting" --- I agree if it gets hot when there is data transfer, but when it is idle doing nothing, what makes it get hot?

In my logic, if it gets hot when idle, it will be no surprise if it overheat and fail when it is "in action" (i.e. huge data transfer). One thing to clarify, did you copy files into it straight away "out of the box" or did you reformat it before transferring anything into it?

My primary concern (which I guess others' too) is whether this excessive heat will damage our laptop (i.e. USB port or burn/melt the palmrest area where the USB port is located)?

Sandisk does provide warranty but only on the stick (which makes sense), not our laptop neither USB port. Therefore I guess many would rather not to use, or at least use with high caution.

Re: Ultra Fit USB 3.0: Excessive Heat

@Ed_P - those pics didn't show up until I clicked the link. that is a serious malfunction for sure, but I haven't had issues like that yet. you can't rule out the possibility that it was defective and that the heat issue wasn't at fault.

@Chin - it heats up while idle because it's still running. there's much more heat during data transfers.

I didn't reformat.

it hasn't caused any problems for my USB port yet, even though I did big transfers the other day. while I'm assuming the best, I'm still going to use it economically. for more routine data transfers I'll probably use the 16gb flashdrives.